Drinking too much is bad for you: 6,500 people die a year because of it, and the cost of alcohol abuse to the NHS comes a close third in the league table headed by smoking and obesity. This is not only about young women falling out of nightclubs (although the medical profession is increasingly worried about the alcohol-related damage they are finding among young people), or the social damage that long licensing hours and drunken behaviour cause. It is about the rest of us who regularly drink over the recommended amount, a group growing, on some figures, as steadily in the UK as it is falling in the rest of Europe.

It's a timely moment for the well-respected health committee of backbench MPs, chaired by the former health secretary Stephen Dorrell, to assess the government's alcohol strategy. It is not impressed. Mr Dorrell, poacher turned gamekeeper, suspects Whitehall's cosy relationship with the industry may be blunting its appetite for better regulation.

As veterans of the campaign against smoking know, there are lots of ways of making drinking look attractive, and the industry is fighting a polite but determined action to keep them all. The code drawn up by the Portman Group regulates advertising, marketing and sponsorship. Young drinkers are a special concern: anything making alcohol look cool is banned, it promises. It is not clear where an advertising campaign that ties Heineken lager to the new Bond movie fits. And 007 isn't giving up his martinis either. The industry insists much is being done, and points to supermarkets' pledges to expand the range of low-alcohol wines and beers, and industry promises to put advice about safe drinking limits and drinking while pregnant on to thousands of glasses (branded, obviously). The health committee is not persuaded.

The MPs raise some tricky questions about the lack of specific evidence on minimum unit pricing of the sort that might lend authority to the policy. They also worry how it will work across the UK, as health is a devolved matter, and what mechanism will be used to decide when and by how much it should be raised. But the big question is advertising. It is nearly three years since the BMA called for a total ban – on sponsorship too – as part of a strategy to curb drinking. The industry says there's no evidence that it encourages drinking, a surprising assertion when it has an £800m-a-year budget. But the real attack is reserved for the government's responsibility deal – less passing the buck than dropping it. The committee has joined major health organisations to dismiss the idea that Andrew Lansley's vaunted project is any substitute for government policy. Committee reports are rarely game-changing, but this one certainly puts another ice cube in the health secretary's drink.